Combinatorics as medial implosion

Andreas Kilcher and Tore Langholz

Project in the framework of the NCCR Medienwandel - Medienwechsel - Medienwissen. Historical

The sub-project investigates forms and functions of medial 'implosion' using the example of combinatorics. The concept of 'implosion' (Baudrillard, McLuhan) does not describe a dysfunction within technical communication processes or a disturbance of the medial system, but rather emergence phenomena that are structurally linked to the success of mediality: a surplus of semiotic and medial effort is countered by a disappearance of the semantic. This finding has so far been considered characteristic of the digital age. The project assumes, however, that information overload made the question of models for the collection, storage and circulation of knowledge data relevant even in pre-modern epistemologies. Combinatorics is an excellent example of this: it was not only considered a universalising procedure of rationalisation in the discovery and storage of knowledge; it also shows the implosive power of a released medial that opposes knowledge order and the production of meaning. Two variants can be distinguished: an encyclopaedic one, which catches the implosion of meaning in universal scientific hyper-organisation and aims at omniscience, and a mystical-ecstatic variant, which aims precisely at the dissolution of knowledge. (1) The procedure of knowledge generation by means of combination, developed in the tradition of Lullism as the "art of knowledge" (ars generalis or ars mag- na sciendi), tests the limits of the alphabetic sign system by producing enormous semiotic surpluses that are no longer semantically catchable. In the course of the explosive expansion of the semiotic stock through combination, an implosion of the semantic takes place. Nevertheless, the lullistic models of knowledge aim at regulating such sign movements. The medial energy of this process allows meaning to implode in a controlled way: as a comprehensive possibility of knowledge. (2) The mystical-ecstatic models of combinatorics, on the other hand, aim at deregulation by virtually celebrating the implosion of meaning. The Kabbalah is an example of this. Compared to the rational knowledge model of the Lullian ars, it shows functional differences as well as methodological divergences in the combinatorial procedure. In particular, the "ecstatic Kabbalah" (Abraham Abulafia) consciously leads the scribal expansion of the combination (chochmath ha-ziruf) to the implosion of semantics, information and knowledge. Omniscience here gives way to the suspension of thought in a medial pleroma. The goal of the Kabbalah is not the exhaustion of the possible, but a logic of surpassing sign-like production of meaning with the aim of experiencing an unnameable divine in the noise of written signs.